


Fang and Stake

by darkbluebox



Series: AFTG Angst Fest 2020 [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Enemies to Lovers, Halloween, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Hunters, prompt: bite me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkbluebox/pseuds/darkbluebox
Summary: For most hunters, it would have been a wet dream: his quarry beaten, bleeding, trapped and prone before him. He might as well have been holding a stake on a silver platter. If it had been any other vampire in the world, Andrew wouldn’t have hesitated to drive the splintering chunk of wood through his chest and be done with it.Unfortunately, Neil wasn’t any other vampire.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: AFTG Angst Fest 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980787
Comments: 58
Kudos: 331
Collections: AFTG ANGST FEST, All for the Game Fics





	Fang and Stake

**Author's Note:**

> Writing vampire fanfiction in a public library like some sort of delinquent because I have no wifi in my flat.
> 
> AFTG angst fest day 21: Bite Me
> 
> ((idk if I'd exactly count this as angst but I had it in my folder and the prompt fitted pretty well sooooo early halloween present for yall)))
> 
> (((((sorry for all the other wips ive been ignoring, but, like i said, no wifi)))))
> 
> Content warnings: blood, violence, self-harm mention, death, references to PTSD/childhood trauma/assault

The vampire was slippery. Andrew didn’t like slippery; more challenge, more effort, more time spent charging through woodlands with rain and sweat soaking through his clothes and the echo of Kevin’s orders biting at his heels. The night was too cold for running, and the ache in his legs told him that he would be ending it bruised and exhausted. If bruising was the worst of his injuries come sunrise, he would consider himself… not lucky, Andrew had never been lucky, but satisfied. He had to find satisfaction somewhere; despite Kevin’s enthusiasm, the promised thrill of the chase had yet to ensnare Andrew. The thud of his heart in his chest was born of exertion and no more. It played a deafening drumbeat in his ears, perhaps compensating for his quarry’s shortcomings in that department.

The hunt required little strategy or forethought; tonight’s mark was bleeding. Profusely. Any idiot could follow a trail of blood, and frankly Andrew’s talents were wasted on this assignment. To think that Kevin had wanted him to take _backup._ Kevin was intelligent, of course, no man could keep his position without a few brain cells between his ears – but when it came to Andrew, he magically developed both the stubbornness and IQ of a common mule. Kevin was adamant that Andrew learn to work as part of a team. Andrew was equally adamant that he hunt alone.

Specks of red flecked the path ahead of him, a glinting ruby treasure-trail. Kevin’s notes divulged few details where tonight’s quarry was concerned, but Andrew wouldn’t have paid them much mind anyway. Andrew’s marks were all the same; cruel, cunning, merciless. It took one to catch one, and if Kevin passed this vampire to Andrew instead of one of his more cooperative hunters, it was for a good reason.

After a pathetically short chase, Andrew tracked the figure to a riverbank swollen by rain. He could feel his lips slicing open into an empty smile as he saw the figure staring morosely into the water which cut through his escape route with the efficiency of a ravine. Vampiric rules, as strange as they were convenient.

Andrew flicked the stake over in his hand a few times as he approached. He wasn’t one to draw out a kill, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t make a show of it, if only to sap his victim of any remaining morale. The gesture was wasted on this vampire; its shoulders were heaving and shuddering in turn, heavy with defeat. Its hair was plastered to his head, darkened by the rain which ran rivulets down the nape of its neck.

His mark hadn’t been having a good night, even before Andrew caught its trail. The burnt, decaying smell of vampiric blood was thick in the air. Andrew’s mind caught him by the throat and dragged him somewhere deep and dark, where old memories thrashed and screamed. If the vampire had gained its injuries doing what Andrew suspected it had been doing, a quick death would be more than it deserved.

The snapping of twigs underfoot gave him away, not that Andrew was making any effort to mask his approach. He had no need for the benefit of surprise.

The vampire looked up, eyes piercing blue. The familiar colour jolted through Andrew like an electric shock. He lowered his stake. “You. _You’re_ Nathaniel?”

“Shit,” Neil said, half-way between a gasp and a laugh. “Andrew.” His legs gave out as though knocked from beneath him, and the vampire fell to his knees.

For most hunters, it would have been a wet dream; his mark beaten, bleeding, trapped and prone before him. He might as well have been holding a stake on a silver platter. If it had been any other vampire in the world, Andrew wouldn’t have hesitated to drive the splintering chunk of wood through his chest and be done with it. 

Unfortunately, Neil wasn’t any other vampire.

Neil – Andrew had never believed it was his real name, not for a second – was, irritatingly, one of the good ones, a fact which Andrew believed with the kind of certainty that he had long thought himself to have outgrown. Hunters only pursued vampires that were a proven danger to humans, which meant that somewhere down the line, Andrew had been lied to. It only remained to decide which end the lie came from: Neil, or Andrew’s superiors.

Common sense should have put the blame squarely on Neil’s shoulders. He had every reason to lie to Andrew – to preserve his cover, to get close to someone with inside information on the Hunters, to buy himself a little protection or mercy from a friend on the inside should the time come – but Andrew’s instincts screamed over common sense.

He always knew Neil was trouble, of course. He was a vampire – it came with the territory. Neil was the only vampire Andrew had ever met that showed no sign of fear or revulsion upon discovering how Andrew paid his rent. It made Andrew wonder what else Neil had to fear, that the human who slept with a stake under his pillow should have no effect upon him at all. It made Neil a puzzle, but worst of all, it made him interesting. Deliberately or not, Neil certainly knew how to interest Andrew.

The whole situation smelt of a set-up. Someone in a high place must have really, really wanted him dead. Somehow, Andrew wasn’t surprised. After all, he had wanted Neil dead from the first night Neil slipped a name through the open crack of Andrew’s window, a name which lead him to a very, very bad man. At first, Andrew had wondered if Neil was using him as his own personal hitman, picking off vampires that posed a threat to his territory. As time passed and bodies mounted, it became clear that Neil had the same distaste for bloodshed as Andrew. The same immunity, too; when they arrived by chance at the scene of an attack within moments of each other, Neil’s reaction to the family bleeding out on the living room floor was as muted as Andrew’s. Andrew was tempted to blame it on the side-effects of vampirism, were it not for the way Neil’s eyes slid past the pools of blood with complete disinterest.

Neil never seemed to send help Andrew’s way with any hope of recognition or reward; he seemed to think it was the right thing to do. A good Samaritan; Andrew’s least favourite type of person.

“If I were someone else, you would be dead,” Andrew said. He noted the way Neil’s eyes tracked his stake, and he slotted it back into the hook on his belt.

“As would you.” Neil pressed a hand to his side and winced. “At least I don’t have a doppelganger running around. Makes things a lot more confusing.”

“Remember the rules, Neil.” Andrew tapped his fingers against the handle of his stake. “Family stays out of this.”

“Don’t worry, it’s easy enough now I know your smell from his. Yours is far more…” Neil’s gaze grew strangely distant, eyes flickering black, before he realised, wisely, that this wasn’t a good line of thought to follow. “Sorry.” He wobbled before falling onto his side with a quiet _thunk_. “Ouch.”

Andrew walked forward until he was standing over Neil. His shirt was dark with patches of blood, presumably his own. Andrew didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. Neither, if he were smart, but _smart_ always seemed to go out of the window at the same moment that Neil entered through it. “Vampires are supposed to heal quicker than this.” He nudged Neil’s abdomen with the toe of his boot, ignoring Neil’s protesting hiss. “Stop being dramatic.”

“I can’t.” Neil’s voice cracked with strain. “They doused their blades in holy water.”

There was a sudden, piercing pain at the back of Andrew’s skull. If he didn’t know better, he would call it fear. “You’re going to die.”

Neil laughed mirthlessly, fangs catching the moonlight. “I’m already dead.”

“Fix it.”

Neil smiled as though amused by the urgency in Andrew’s tone. Andrew hated that smile as much as he hated the man who wore it. “No.”

Andrew dropped to his knees and clinically yanked Neil’s shirt open to examine his wounds. Neil’s body was a mess of scarring, but it was the fresh wounds that drew Andrew’s eye, raw and red in some places, scorched black in others. His hands hovered over the ragged remains of Neil’s torso, twitching with uncertainty. Hunters weren’t taught to heal; they were taught to kill. For the first time in his life, Andrew wished his brother was there in his place. “What kind of blades?”

“I didn’t stop to ask.” Neil coughed, missing the look Andrew levelled at him. “Sharp ones.”

Andrew let out a low, involuntary hiss. He placed a careful hand to the raw red of Neil’s abdomen. Neil jerked, his skin ice-cold under Andrew’s palm.

The solution came to him with an abruptness that was almost painful.

“Feeding will heal you,” Andrew said. It was barely a question, but all the same he knew the answer before the words even passed his lips. He also knew from the cold determination in Neil’s eyes that Neil had reached the same conclusion and dismissed it immediately. Neil _knew_ Andrew, knew the stories behind the stake under his pillow, and would never ask, would never even _think_ to ask, even if it meant dying in his arms. The quiet understanding, the assurance, the silent promise of _not like them_ that underpinned their every interaction was almost enough to rip Andrew to pieces. Because just as Neil knew Andrew, Andrew knew Neil, knew that Neil would never tear Andrew apart for his own satisfaction, would never use him up and throw him away like butcher’s scraps. _Not like them_. Neil looked at Andrew in a way that none had before, not like something to be consumed, but like something… else. Something important.

Andrew could slit his own throat in front of Neil, and Neil would still bleed to death before taking anything from Andrew that hadn’t been offered.

Andrew shook Neil’s shoulder, and when he saw the distant, glassy look in Neil’s eyes, he tried again. “Neil. Feeding will heal you.”

Neil coughed. His lips were flecked with his own blood. “If you know where I can buy a gallon of purified pig’s blood around here, I’m all ears.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Andrew growled.

Neil’s eyes flicked to Andrew’s as understanding dawned. He tried to push himself away, but there was nowhere to go but deeper into the loose dirt of the riverbank “I don’t feed from people. I won’t be like _them._ ”

“I won’t let you be.” Andrew tightened his grip on Neil’s shoulder. Neil looked like he had more objections to make, but the violent shake of his hands betrayed him, as did the terrible, ashy colour of his skin. “I trust you.”

“No.”

“Bite me,” Andrew said, “Or I’ll cut my wrists open and force the blood down your throat myself.”

“You wouldn’t,” Neil said, and his certainty burns in the back of Andrew’s throat like bile.

“Try me.” Andrew said lowly.

Neil looked at him for a long moment, jaw clenched. Andrew could see the moment he caved in; however flimsy Andrew’s bluff, Neil would never risk calling it. He watched with careful blankness as Andrew tugged at his collar before giving up and tearing it along the seam, the sound surprisingly loud in the night air. Neil’s eyes caught on the bared expanse of Andrew’s neck and stuck there. There was a want in his eyes, but it wasn’t the kind of hunger Andrew was used to seeing from his kind. It was cautious, careful, aware. A single word from Andrew and it would be buried without complaint or reprehension. It was this knowledge that let Andrew shuffle closer, pulling Neil up and against him so that his weight was supported by Andrew’s arms. Neil might have been cold, but he was warmer than the night air, and the sensation seeped through Andrew’s skin slow as syrup.

Neil’s breath stuttered out of him as his head lolled against Andrew. “I’ve never…” Neil said, little more than a whisper. “…I’ve never done this. I don’t know if I can… If I can make it not hurt.”

“I know.”

“Is it still yes?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. Then, impatiently, “Sometime tonight?”

Neil sighed. There was a flash of teeth, and then a heat burned through Andrew’s shoulder unlike anything he had ever felt.

Andrew wasn’t sure what kind of noise escaped him. Neil twitched like he was about to pull back, but the clench of Andrew’s hand in his hair urged him on. Neil’s hand wavered between them as though searching for something to steady himself with, landing at last Andrew. For once, Andrew didn’t mind the contact as Neil dragged one hand from Andrew’s shoulder down to his arm, gripping on like Andrew was a rock in a stormy sea. Andrew’s body was a jumble of warring sensations, but the sudden wet heat as Neil’s tongue slid across the bite wound sent a shiver straight through him.

Neil pushed himself back, quick to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes had turned a deep red, and they didn’t quite refocus again until they had faded back to their normal blue. His skin was closer to his usual tan, and his wounds appeared, mercifully, to have scabbed over. They tingled under Andrew’s hands as though his blood was calling out to him from within Neil’s body.

Neil’s eyes fixed on the mark left on Andrew’s neck. For a moment, Andrew worried that Neil needed more, that he had denied himself what he needed for Andrew’s sake, but the crease between Neil’s eyebrows was concern, not hunger.

Neil reached for the wound, running cool fingers across damp skin. Beneath the sting of the bite was that tingling sensation again, and this time Andrew was certain he could feel his own pulse in Neil’s fingertips. Neil pressed two careful fingers against Andrew’s pulse-point, but before worry could blacken his expression any further Andrew caught Neil’s hand in his. With his other hand, he tugged what remained of his shirt back into place. “What is it you’re so fond of saying? I’m _fine_?”

“Fuck you,” Neil replied, his words slurring through swollen, pink lips. His pupils were still a size too large, but there was no hint of anything but his usual ice-blue irritation in his expression.

“You can thank me with the name and address of the man who did this.” Andrew punctuated his words by resting his palm on Neil’s healing torso.

“He doesn’t take kindly to house visits.”

“I don’t care what he takes kindly to. Name, Neil.”

“Nathan.” The word shook from Neil’s chest as though it had clawed its way free with no regard for what it tore along the way. “My father, Nathan Wesninski.”

Nathan Wesninski. An influential figure and generous donor to Andrew’s organisation. It would explain how Neil ended up on Andrew’s hitlist.

Little did they know.

“He isn’t the kind of person you can go up against on your own.” Neil tried to wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and missed. Andrew wiped it off with his sleeve, ignoring the way Neil’s lips twitched upwards at the gesture.

“Good thing I’m not on my own, isn’t it?”

Neil’s smile grew. Damn him. “Can I kiss you?”

Andrew flicked his gaze over Neil’s bitten lips, the growing flush of his skin, hair mussy and clotted with dried blood. “No.” Then, before Neil could get the wrong idea, he added, “ask me again when you aren’t delirious.” Andrew wouldn’t be like them; he wouldn’t let Neil let him be.

Neil’s smile, somehow, grew even more.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out #aftgangstfest for more angsty/halloween-y fun!
> 
> [My tumblr](https://darkblueboxs.tumblr.com) and [twitter.](https://twitter.com/darkblueboxs)


End file.
